1. Field of the Invention
The present invention provides a scheme for enhancing the performance of detecting objects in an image containing the objects, and more particularly, relates to an image processing apparatus and program that use an information item from a read unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is a main object of image processing to detect and recognize a plurality of objects using image information. To this end, in general, features are beforehand extracted from objects using a certain scheme, and stored in units of types, and when objects are detected, features are extracted from an image including the objects, using the same scheme, and are compared with stored ones (see, for example, JP-A 2006-192563 (KOKAI), and David G. Lowe, “Distinctive image features from scale-invariant keypoints,” International Journal of Computer Vision, 60, 2 (2004), pp. 91-110). Further, JP-A 2006-192563 (KOKAI), for example, discloses an approach to acquiring information on the type of an object (e.g., person information in JP-A 2006-192563) located in the vicinity, using a wireless IC tag, thereby narrowing down the range of object types and then executing comparison to enhance the accuracy of detection.
In the above-mentioned approach, features of objects are extracted from an image, using a single method. This method can exhibit high performance when the range of extraction is limited, for instance, when objects are limited to, for example, the faces of persons. However, it is difficult for a single feature extraction method to extract all features of objects when a large number of objects are targets.